Boys swimming swipes second

By Allison Goldsmith

Saturday

Mar 1, 2014 at 2:00 AM

After finishing second in the league during the regular season, the Nantucket boys swimming and diving team finished second again at the Bay Colony Conference Championship meet Sunday in Sandwich. The girls’ team finished sixth out of six teams.

Both Nantucket teams defeated Nauset in the final regular season meet last Wednesday. For the girls’ team (1-4-1), the 96-74 victory was its first win of the season. The boys wrapped up a 6-1 campaign with a 96-73 win.

At the BCC meet, the regular-season champion Sandwich boys came out on top with 452 points, well out in front of the Whalers’ 264. Nauset (173), Barnstable (160), Coyle Cassidy (126), Bridgewater-Raynham (92) and Taunton (72) rounded out the finishers.

“We knew Sandwich was really strong and they had a great meet. We performed right on par. We didn’t have anything that was outstanding or record-breaking, but we swam our seed times and accomplished what we needed to,” head coach Jim Pignato said.

Barnstable topped the girls meet for the third straight year. The Red Raiders (384) were followed by Coyle Cassidy (217), Nauset (189), Bridgewater-Raynham (189), Taunton (176) and Nantucket (161).

The Whaler boys will send five swimmers to the sectional tournament Saturday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pool in Cambridge. Three qualified individually – Beau Garufi, Trevor Lockley and Henry Toole – and Sam Toole and Lorne Paterson will also travel to compete in the relay events.

The Whaler girls will send four swimmers to the sectionals Sunday, also at the MIT pool. Jesse Lang, Meaghan Lynch, Merrill McCluskey and Carly Jensen, who finished fourth overall in the 200-yard freestyle (1:57.08) at the BCC championship meet, will swim the 200-free relay and the 200-yard medley relay this weekend.

Championship weekend

The Whaler boys earned three first-place finishes at the league championships. Garufi easily picked up two top honors, taking the 200-yard freestyle in 1:53.25 and the 100-yard breaststroke in 1:02.78. Will Lendway earned first place in the diving competition on Friday afternoon, edging out Coyle Cassidy’s Nathan O’Keefe by 0.19 points. Lendway tallied 169.88 in his first championship diving event.

“That was a pleasant surprise for us and I give him a lot of credit for that,” Pignato said. “Will was a swimmer for us last year and he wanted to do diving this year and we let him make that move over and he has progressed very quickly.”

Also swimming well Saturday, Paterson notched a personal-best time with a 1:13.28 and a fourth-place finish in the 100-yard breaststroke. Fitzgibbon sprinted to a personal best 25.51 and a seventh-place finish in the 50-yard freestyle.

“Sean Fitzgibbon is coming into his own right now. The past two meets he has swam phenomenally, dropping seconds in short events, which is difficult to do,” Pignato said.

Henry Farrell also swam a personal best with a 1:11.44 in the 100-yard butterfly.

The Nantucket girls put on a good showing Sunday with strong individual swims, but as a team could not keep pace with the rest of the league. “I was expecting to be in the bottom tier running. I didn’t think we were going to pull a sixth-place finish. Twenty-eight points separated third and sixth. That point spread is a difference of one or two girls placing in the seventh to 12th range. If we had a few more bodies it would have looked a little better on paper. We swam a great meet. There is nothing to be disappointed about. The girls were right on where they were all season with their seed times,” Pignato said.

Lang swam for two personal-best times at the championship meet, earning a seventh-place finish in the 200-yard IM at 2:38.96 and ninth place in the 100-yard butterfly at 1:12.81. Jensen swam season-lows in the 50-yard freestyle (28.13) and the 100-yard freestyle (1:03.42).

Elizabeth Reed swam a personal best for a ninth-place finish in the 200-yard freestyle (2:26.57), and Lynch and Ellie Smith finished eighth and ninth, respectively, in the 500-yard freestyle.

Double win

Both teams picked up a win in the final regular season dual meet last Wednesday. For the boys it was expected, but for the girls team it was a welcome victory.

“It made going into the championships a lot better. We had that momentum and the girls really earned it and deserved a win this season,” Pignato said. The girls picked up eight first-place finishes in the meet. McCluskey started things off with a strong 200-yard freestyle finish (2:20.78) followed by Lang with two first-place finishes in the 200-yard individual medley (2:41.37) and the 100-yard butterfly (1:15.69).

Jensen scored two firsts in the freestyle sprint events, taking the 50-yard freestyle in 28.59 and the 100-yard freestyle in 1:03.93.

Ellie Smith had a strong swim in the 100-yard backstroke (1:18.07) and finished second behind Lynch in the 500-yard freestyle.

For the boys, the score was close through most of the meet, but the Whalers pulled away late.

“I knew this was a meet we could definitely win,” Pignato said. “We were in control the whole way, like we did against Barnstable, we had a strong back half of the meet, especially in the breaststroke.”

For the second time in two meets, the Whalers swept the breaststroke event 1-2-3 to break away for the victory.

Earlier in the meet Fitzgibbon picked up a first place with a 2:14.06 in the 200-yard freestyle and Garufi edged out rival Matthias Christensen with a season-low in the 200-yard individual medley (2:05.25). Henry Toole qualified for the State Championships in the 50-yard freestyle with a 23.31 first-place finish.

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